Dubai, UAE, October 3, 2010 -- SunGard Higher Education and rSmart has announced a partnership regarding the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE), an enterprise community-source teaching, learning and research collaboration system. The partnership provides colleges and universities with comprehensive support to adopt the rSmart Sakai CLE as well as integration with select SunGard Higher Education solutions.
Through the partnership, SunGard Higher Education will offer subscriptions to the rSmart Sakai CLE, as well as integration, implementation and migration services, with rSmart providing hosting and support services.
"Over the past year we have seen very strong adoption of the rSmart Sakai CLE from institutions seeking a reduced cost of ownership from existing systems, those embracing Sakai's innovative vision for the future, and those drawn to the open pedagogy of Sakai," said Chris Coppola, chief executive officer of rSmart. "We are pleased to have a partner in SunGard Higher Education that can help ease the path to Sakai for institutions."
The relationship aligns with SunGard Higher Education's Open Digital Campus vision, which gives colleges and universities more flexibility to choose the technologies, delivery models, and both open source and vendor solutions that fit their unique needs. It helps to provide new options for institutions to extend their current investments, deliver measurable benefits to the constituents they serve, and reduce the total cost of ownership.
"As our customers seek to address needs of their students and faculty, they have asked us to provide them with greater flexibility," said Fred Weiss, senior vice president, SunGard Higher Education. "Our partnership with rSmart helps achieve this as it provides access to a community-source system with a subscription pricing model. Most importantly, the rSmart Sakai CLE assists institutions in meeting teaching, learning, research and collaboration needs that are core to the academic mission."
Bill Thirsk, vice president of information technology and chief information officer, Marist College, explained, "Our mission to become a recognized leader in information technology and our experience with innovation and applied research requires that we develop strong partnerships. Both rSmart and SunGard Higher Education have worked with us to not only implement excellent collaborative learning environments and student-centric ERP services, but also to engage with us in the development of strong and deep community source models that are now thriving. We believe this new partnership will further enhance outcomes for students, faculty and staff; institutions of all profiles, sizes, and resource levels could benefit from the new relationship. Together, rSmart and SunGard Higher Education can offer a proven Sakai offering that integrates with existing campus systems, facilitating the ability of institutions in adopting Sakai."
-Ends-
About rSmart
rSmart supports open software for colleges, universities, schools and education organizations. The company provides its customers with a fully supported path to adopt and sustain community-developed learning, research, and administrative software developed together with the Sakai and Kuali open source communities. Whether deployed on site, or hosted and consumed in a SaaS model, rSmart makes these innovative and cost-effective solutions available to institutions of all profiles. For more information, please go to www.rsmart.com.
About SunGard Higher Education
SunGard Higher Education serves colleges, universities and foundations in 40 countries worldwide. Through its Open Digital Campus strategy, SunGard collaborates with the higher education community and provides software and services to help institutions find better ways to teach, learn, manage and connect. www.sungardhe.com
About SunGard
SunGard is one of the world's leading software and technology services companies. SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves 25,000 customers in 70 countries. SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 380 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company. For more information, please visit www.sungard.com.
Trademark information: SunGard, the SunGard logo and Open Digital Campus are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
For more information, please contact:
Toju Ogbe | Associate Program Director| BPG PR
Level 6 MAF Tower Deira City Center| PO Box 3294 Dubai UAE
T +971 4 295 3456 Ext 302 | F +971 4 295 1027 | M +971 50 104 5113
toju@batespangulf.com | www.batespangulf.com
© Press Release 2010
